Archive for the ‘Marcel DeLay’ tag

Wherever lies the line between coachbuilt car and custom car, between handcrafted work of rolling art and aesthetically altered automobile, rock star James Hetfield and custom car builder Rick Dore have obliterated it with their latest car, and in the process captured the Goodguys Custom of the Year award.

Hetfield, front man for the long-lived heavy metal group Metallica, has long been known for his taste in high-end custom cars. A member of the Beatniks car club, Hetfield’s customs have progressed over the last decade or so from a simple chopped 1936 Ford to a radical chrome-bedecked 1936 Auburn Speedster to the Voodoo Priest, his chopped and V-12-powered 1937 Lincoln Zephyr that took the World’s Most Beautiful Custom award at the 2012 Sacramento Autorama.

For his latest custom, though, Hetfield went beyond merely modifying an existing car. Designed with Rick Dore, who handled the customizing work on Voodoo Priest, the car may have started out with the chassis of a 1948 Jaguar Mk 4 and some renderings inspired by the Art Deco era of European coachbuilding. Specifically, some have pointed to the work of Figoni et Falaschi and Letourneur et Marchand as influences on the car’s styling, but Hetfield has said that it’s meant to combine the best of European coachbuilding design and American custom car design from about the same era. “We started out with a left-hand-drive Jaguar, [but] we couldn’t get what we wanted out of it so we just kept drawing,” Hetfield told the Contra Costa Times.

To shape the body, Hetfield and Dore turned to famed panelbeaters Marcel and Luc De Lay to form it out of aluminum by hand and from scratch, a task they reportedly accomplished in the span of six months. “The fact that [the De Lays] started with an 8-by-10 drawing and ended up with a complete car is a testament to the ability of the human mind and hands,” Hetfield said in a Goodguys press release. “It still blows people’s minds when they ask what body we started with and we say ‘steel sheets.’”

About all that remained of the original Jaguar chassis after the build were the outer frame rails, which now supported a 375-hp Ford 302-cu.in. V-8 and Ford C4 automatic transmission. Airbags front and rear connect the Mustang II-style independent front suspension and four-link 9-inch rear axle to the frame, and GM discs front and Ford Explorer discs rear stop the car.

While the Black Pearl debuted at last year’s Grand National Roadster Show wearing not a lick of paint and still sans a number of details, it re-emerged earlier this year wearing Daryl Hollenback-sprayed black paint, a Ron Mangus interior, and Wheelsmith Fabrications wheels with custom brass center caps.

To win the Custom of the Year award at this past weekend’s Goodguys show in Pleasanton, California, the Black Pearl beat out a few other customs, including the 1939 Lincoln Zephyr of John Fleming of Asher, Oklahoma; the 1955 Cadillac of Brandon Penserini of American Canyon, California; the 1956 Packard Caribbean of Mike and Rita Gardner of Livermore, California; and the 1951 Ford Victoria of Mark and Kelly Skipper of Fresno, California.

An icon of the Detroit customizing scene of the 1950s and 1960s died last week, while a new icon of street rodding took home additional accolades.
Bob Kaiser of Clarkaiser Customs died last Wednesday in the Detroit area. While the Alexander brothers dominated the Detroit customizing scene of the 1950s and 1960s, Clarkaiser—the only other major Motown custom shop—turned out many well-respected customs, including the Larry Ernst 1952 Ford, the Arctic Sands 1948 Ford coupe, the Utopia 1950 Ford coupe, the Stan Lendzon 1952 Buick, the Golden Bird 1955 Thunderbird and the sectioned Volpe Brothers 1948 Mercury.
Meanwhile, Ken Reister’s Impression, the Chip Foose-built 1936 Ford roadster, which already won the Ridler award in 2005 and the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster Award earlier this year, won the Goodguys America’s Most Beautiful Street Rod Award at the Goodguys West Coast Nationals in Pleasanton Aug. 25-27. Foose’s shop spent the better part of seven years hand-crafting the car, from its 118-inch-wheelbase chassis to its steel and aluminum body, shaped by Marcel DeLay’s shop in what amounts to seven-eighths scale. A Chevrolet LS1 V-8 powers the rod.

(This post originally appeared in the September 7, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)

Another Chip Foose design took this year’s America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award over the weekend, while other custom-builds that crossed the block at Barrett-Jackson drew less money than expected.
Impression, the custom-built 1936 Ford roadster that took the 2005 Ridler award, earned owner Ken Reister the 9-foot trophy. Foose’s shop spent the better part of seven years hand-crafting the car, from its 118-inch-wheelbase chassis to its steel and aluminum body, shaped by Marcel DeLay’s shop in what amounts to seven-eighths scale. A Chevrolet LS1 V-8 powers the rod, which has received a large amount of television and magazine coverage since its debut at the 2005 Detroit Autorama.
In Scottsdale, the big news for rods came when Royce Glader’s Loaded – a 1929 Model A roadster pickup fully handbuilt by Eric Peratt of Pinkees Rod Shop – gaveled at $190,000 on Saturday. While a good amount of money, speculation that Glader spent more than $300,000 to build the showpiece perhaps explains why many believe the buyer got the deal of the weekend. Glader did pick up $20,000 with Loaded last March at Darryl Starbird’s Tulsa show and a host of awards throughout 2005, but narrowly missed last year’s AMBR trophy.
Other professionally built rods expected to gross near their build prices often missed the mark by as much or more than Loaded. Rods advertised as professionally built averaged from $90,000 to $110,000 – a range that included the $102,600 M80, the 1949 Chevrolet business coupe that won the 2001 Ridler award.
Just two rods sold for significantly more than that average: Lead Zephyr, Boyd Coddington’s 1939 Lincoln Zephyr, brought $345,600 – likely riding on name recognition; while Don Tognotti’s Avenger, a Hemi-powered 1932 five-window built in 1960 that graced the lawn at Pebble Beach in 2001, sold for $200,000.

(This post originally appeared in the January 26, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)

A number of street rods will cross the block this January in Phoenix, as always. You’ll likely hear “professionally built” and “magazine featured” enough to make you nauseated, and watching the street rods roll by will resemble a night of watching reruns of all your favorite automotive shows on the tube. Two, though, have their own particular provenance.
First, while many others claim to be built to Ridler-contention quality, just one street rod that we’ve spotted in the catalogs actually won the Ridler– the annual award presented at the Detroit Autorama for the best rod to premier at that show. Chris Williams’s M80, a 1949 Chevrolet Custom Business Coupe, took that award in 2001–the 50th anniversary of the show–as well as the Sam Radoff Sculptural Excellence Award, Best Custom and Best in Class at the Autorama. Williams had Randy Clark at Hot Rods and Custom Stuff in Escondido, California, perform all the bodywork and install the Corvette LS1 V-8, six-speed manual transmission and four-wheel independent suspension. The M80 will go across the Barrett-Jackson block during the January auctions in Scottsdale.
We also spied Boyd Coddington’s Lead Zephyr in the Barrett-Jackson catalog. The slick 1938 Lincoln Zephyr that Coddington–assisted by master metalman Marcel DeLay–built for Tony Pisano of Connecticut also debuted in 2001, powered by a 600hp 514-cu.in. Ford crate engine. The car’s debut marked Coddington’s return from bankruptcy.
Finally, Royce Glader’s Loaded, a mucho modified 1929 Ford roadster pickup that debuted earlier this year, will cross, also at Barrett-Jackson. Glader had Eric Peratt of Pinkees Rod Shop in Windsor, Colorado, build the 1955 Hemi-powered pickup with a handmade body and custom-built wheels, then took a runner-up award at the Grand National Roadster Show and the $20,000 prize at Darryl Starbird’s Tulsa show in February before winning the Goodguys/Eagle One Street Rod of the Year award in June in Columbus, Ohio.
As we find more noteworthy rods in the auction catalogs, we’ll let you know.

(This post originally appeared in the December 1, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)